


Peter Nureyev and the Devil of Brahma

by Tywyll



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, au where everything is the same but Peter destroyed a city, learning to love again, peter is the dense one this time!, romantic role reversal, skipping the beats that are the same
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24071710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tywyll/pseuds/Tywyll
Summary: Ah, good evening traveler, welcome to the Penumbra. Peter Nureyev once trusted his former father-figure Mag just a bit too much, and now must live with the blood of a thousand people on his hands. With that kind of regret, he often thinks about making amends to the families he ended, and doesn't trust himself to be loved, not even by Juno. Nureyev could let detective Steel in to show him how to love again, but will he? To answer that you'll have to ask yourself, how can you sort threw so much suffering?  *knock knock knock* *panting and running* What luck! It sounds like he's in. come traveler, come with me into room A-17, Peter Nuereyev and the Devil of Brahma.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. Part 1

New Kinshasa was in free fall. Peter hadn’t bothered to think about the consequences of his actions, so blind his faith in Mag had been, and why shouldn’t he trust him? He had never steered him wrong before, and there was no reason to think otherwise until now. Mag had asked Peter to drop the city on the world below, and now thousands of people were going to die. And it was all Peter's fault. If he’d only thought for a moment, considered what would happen next, he could have prevented the cutting short of thousands of lives, if he had hesitated for even a moment thousands of people might still be alive in a few hours. Instead, Peter Nureyev was running wildly through a hallway towards where the getaway car had been fastened down to an exhaust vent that should now be open, outpaced only by his own thoughts.  
“How long has Mag been planning to drop the city from the sky? When did it stop being about deactivating the arms systems? Was it ever actually about deactivating the weapons?” and most importantly, “How many people will die in the next few minutes?” All his thoughts kept circling back around to that. All those families and children, the musician in the square, the couple at the cafe, and everyone else he couldn’t even see; all their blood was on his hands. In the red flashing lights, he could practically see it. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed onwards, towards escape, and towards freedom. Towards survival.  
Suddenly, he came to a stumbling stop. Mag had planned the heist. He was just as guilty as Peter was, if not more so. Almost certainly more. All those lives…  
“Peter? Is everything ok?” Mag had come to a stop a few feet ahead of Peter, clear concern on his face. Honest, open, clear concern. Peter could almost smell the death now, how had he never noticed it before?  
“How” Peter sucked in a hard breath. “How long has the crash been the plan?”  
“What do you mean, Peter my boy?” confusion, now. “It was the only way to be certain, we’d always been planning to destroy New Kinshasa.”  
Peter almost couldn’t control what happened next. His knife was in his hand one moment, and the next-

Peter snapped his coms in half, tossing it down a sewer grate nearby. It had been years since that day and he still couldn’t get the image of Mag out of his mind as he had cut into him out of his mind, but for now, he had work to do. Rex had work to do, and he’d just finished reading his notes on the only P.I. on mars who could help him steal the Death Mask of Grimpotheuthis: Juno Steel. Within a few minutes he was standing outside the office, and with a final deep breath, Peter put on his sunglasses, and finished becoming Rex Glass, Dark Matters operative. Pushing inside the building, he spotted Juno’s secretary, Rita, an incredibly gifted hacker, with a penchant for strange snacks and getting distracted by any and everything around her. With a generous smile and a few smooth words, Rita was letting Rex into Juno’s office, where the detective seemed to be climbing out the window, where he froze, and turned to look at what was undoubtedly an intruder into his inner sanctum.  
“Juno,” Peter decided, “is stunning.” tucking that thought into a file labeled “For Future Consideration,” Rex proceeded to sweep Juno into action! The next 20 or so hours was a semi-controlled whirlwind of perfectly timed questions, suggestions, and cutting tools. And at the end of it all, Juno was inviting Rex upstairs, into his office for the evening, and Peter almost said yes, the familiar music from a passing car spinning him back to Brahma, only for a moment, but long enough to remind him that Peter Nureyev is a terrorist, and a mass murderer, and he can’t pretend to be forgivable.  
“Rex? You still in there? You look like you’re a thousand miles away right now.” Juno pressed one of his palms into Rex’s and gave a slight squeeze, snapping him back to the present.  
“Hmm? Oh, sorry, I thought I recognized that song, but the name is gone now. What was it you were asking?”  
“Oh, uh, would you like to come upstairs with me? It’s gotta be warmer upstairs then out on the street waiting for your cab.”  
“I can’t, I’m so sorry, I have a report to write, after all. Paperwork that needs filling and it only piles higher the longer I take getting to it.” Peter managed to hide the twinge of regret that shot threw him as he watched Junos face fall, but he was trying not to be a monster, and he did still need the keys in Juno’s pocket to retrieve the mask from upstairs. “Well, maybe for a moment, I should thank you, you did practically all the hard work of this case for me, after all.” Just like that, Juno’s face lifted and his smile, Juno’s wonderful smile, lifted Peter right up the stairs to the office.  
As Juno returned his keys to his pocket, Peter struck, silently lifting the keys from his pocket alongside Juno's own hand, and depositing them into his own pocket. As Juno closed the door behind him, however, Peter was surprised to find a cold ring of mettle clicking closed around his wrists.  
“Juno?” he turned to face him, letting the confusion show clearly across his face. “What’s this all about?”  
“You’re under arrest glass, for the attempted theft of the Death Mask of Grimpoteuthis, and for stealing the safe keys from my pocket.” He looked even more hurt then when Rex had turned him down downstairs. Silently cursing himself, as Juno shoved him onto the couch, Peter slipped a pen and piece of paper from his pocket and quickly penned a note for Juno to find later, shoving it into the space between two couch cushions just in time for two cops to come bursting into the room.  
As the officers manhandled him into the back of the police cruiser, he managed to steal a set of cuff keys from the officers, and tried to plan a way to apologize to Juno later. An hour later, Peter was throwing off the uniform he had stolen off the cops, and changing into a more comfortable suit. Pulling the coms out of the suits pocket, he checked the account he’d been funneling the credits from his thefts into, sighing as he realized he wouldn’t be making any impact on today. “New Kinshasa Reparation Fund” was still stuck at only a million creds. Sliding the comm back into his pocket he sat down at a computer terminal and started the video call to Miasma, already planning how to tell her he needed another day, and expecting to be ordered to get it tonight anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, dear traveler, is what they at the penumbra like to refer to as, an intermission. So please, take a moment, to pour yourself a soothing libation. Once you've collected yourself, join us for part two of Peter Nureyev and the Devil of Brahma.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good evening, Traveler. Welcome to the Penumbra.  
> Peter Nureyev is not one to get to know more about a person then he has to, but when it comes to Juno Steel, he's found that he can't seem to know enough about him. Fortunately, a mutual contact has reached out to him, seemingly from the blue, inviting him right into Detective Steels' office, and just in time too. Peter needed a hand in a rather high stakes con, and Juno is just the lady for the job.

It had been 7 months since Peter had last seen Juno Steel in person, and in that time, he had not managed a single day without the thought of him lodging itself right between his ears. Not one day without picturing those eyes, sharper than a knife, and quicker than whit, staring right into his soul, and completely missing who he is. Because that’s how Peter had planned it. Had lived nearly his whole life, really.   
But even so, Juno had still caught part of him. The most important part he could say, Juno had caught his murdering, terrorist heart. And he wasn’t really sure how to feel about that as he received a call from one Vicky Valles asking him to meet with a name he had hoped he would someday forget: Juno Steel.   
So, he waited. Heart thundering in his chest as he heard footsteps towards the door, and a gasp after the light came on that almost killed him.   
“Hello, Juno. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” his voice almost caught in this throat, but he hoped the detective would miss just that one little detail.  
“Nureyev?”  
“The very same. Don’t get too comfortable, detective, we’re leaving, immediately.”   
“If you think i’m going to go anywhere with you-”  
“I don’t, detective, I know. And I know you called me by way of one Valles Vicky.”  
“You’re Vickys… This can’t be happening.”  
“Rest assured, it is, and I have not the time to explain to you what’s plainly in front of your face. Now put on your coat and give me your keys, we have a job to do.” The Detective stood stunned before him for a moment, silently opening and closing his mouth while a thousand questions no doubt ran through his mind, before Steel sighed, his shoulders drooping and he turned back around, putting on the coat Nureyev had only just barely noticed him taking off. Peter allowed himself only the briefest of moments to relax while Junos back was turned before resetting his jaw for the work ahead. He needed Juno if he was going to stop miasma from whatever her scheme was with this new martian egg.  
Less than a day later, Peter and Juno, now Duke and Dahlia Rose, were seated at a table across from the infamous Brock Engstrom, thief of many a fine jewel, and present captor of the Ruby 7. Most importantly, the quickest way to learn how to board the Utgard Express, and a known cheater. He needed Juno to prove that he had been cheating, and trusted that his little coded message had been received, but kicked himself mentally when Juno proved he clearly hadn’t by calling out that the cheating was happening without any evidence at all. It was infuriating, and Peter leapt at the chance to take Juno to the bathroom to talk more directly.  
“Juno, that display out there is entirely unprofessional!”  
“You wanna tell me what the hell all of that was about?”  
“There’s a weapon on a train, and my employer-”  
“You know what I mean. I bailed you out 10 times in there and you just keep digging yourself deeper.”  
“I’m having some trouble following this metaphor, am I a sailor or a ditch digger?”  
“Oh, quit joking around.”  
“Fine. Engstrom backed himself into a corner, and we are in a position to take advantage of that. Or we would be, if we were in there right now!”  
“He just admitted to cheating and you wanna go back in there and keep playing Go Fish?”  
“Juno, if there was one game that could never be played for access to a train full of super weapons, Go Fish, is that game. The terrorist in the room distracts everyone from the real game. Your game.”  
“There’s a terrorist in there? Who?”  
“Juno, we have more pressing matters. The important thing is-”  
“No, who’s the terrorist? I think that’s the most important thing in a game for super weapons, hmm? Making sure the terrorist loses.”  
“Juno, I’m the terrorist, and you would know that if you’d done your research on me like I expected you to. Now, if you want to stop an armed robber, someone who will use the weapons on that train, i suggest you figure out how he’s cheating, so we can leave that room with our lives.”  
“You’re a… right, one disaster at a time. We will talk about this, Rose.”  
“Glad you’ve caught up. May we go back now?” Nureyev could hardly believe his ears when the detective continued to protest, and complain, but he did manage to keep his cool and convince the detective to go back out there and search for evidence. It would be a few days before he was able to solve how it was that Juno had figured out the method by which Engstrom was cheating, but by then, it would be too late, and he and Juno would be in the middle of torture.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, good evening traveler. Welcome to the Penumbra.  
> Peter Nureyev is knee-deep in one of the most unpleasant jobs yet. He’s been called to a detectives house in the middle of the night, using his name as collateral in a deadly game of cards, and partnering up with a detective that he finds quite… distracting.  
> But this is his only choice if he’s to stop the super weapon that he and Juno Steel are after. It’s on that train, the Utguard Express. If they leave by morning, all should be fine.  
> Should be, but nothing in a super thiefs life is ever quite so simple, is it?  
> *swipe swipe, whump*  
> What luck! It sounds like he’s in! Come, traveler. Come with me into room A-17.  
> Peter Nureyev and the Train from Nowhere.

Peter had been having a dream involving the detective currently sharing his bed, when lazer fire shattered his sleep.  
“Juno? What the hell was that?”  
“Well, it sure wasn’t the tooth fairy. Hit the light.”  
“Do you know this person, Juno?”  
“No, but with a gun that size, i don’t think she was coming by to ask for a cup of sugar.”  
“Then who-”  
“Let’s just get the hell out of here, alright?”  
“Did she hit you?”  
“Of course not. Didn’t even fire.”  
“Juno, you’re bleeding. There’s blood all over your cheek.”  
“It… must be a nose bleed or something”  
“A nose bleed? It’s all the way up to your-”  
“I said let’s go.”  
Someone knocked on the door, causing them to freeze momentarily  
“I take it you didn’t order room service?” Nureyeve asked.  
“Mr. Rose? Is everything alright in there? We thought we heard gunfire.”  
“Could just be a hotel employee, nureyeve.”  
“Ah yes, invite him in and explain that we’re donating a fun assassin skin rug to the decor.”  
“Mr rose, open the door please, we wouldn’t wanna have to force it.”  
“Window Juno, now.”

An hour later, the two of them had managed to get aboard the train, and get themselves apprehended by Engstrom and his lackey, before momentarily freeing themselves, right into the hands of Miasma. His benefactor from whom Peter was desperately trying not to hand the super weapon he had just picked up. And now there was a gun in his chest and Peter couldn’t quite see a way out without either he or Juno becoming a fancy cheese here in the middle of the desert.  
Not until Juno did the unthinkable.  
“If any of you touch him, this lazer goes straight threw my brain.” and Peter blinked. Surely, peter must have misheard him.  
“And why should I care where you put your lazers, Juno.” no, he must have heard Juno correctly, that for some unfathomable reason, Juno would kill himself for Peter  
“Because you need me. I don’t know why, but you do, and that puts you in a pretty bad position, doesn’t it, Miasma.”  
“Fine. The thief lives, but he comes with us.”  
“Like hell he does!”  
“Don’t overestimate your value - there are other ways to get what i want from you. I would rather this be easy, but the moment you’re more trouble than you’re worth, the thief dies. Load the egg.” somehow, Juno was right? He had found a way to bargain with Miasma, by putting his own life on the line. Apparently, that’s what Miasma wanted, but Peter couldn’t fathom a reason why, other than devilish good looks, but that simply didn’t fit with Miasma as far as he had known her. 

Peter got in the car.

**Author's Note:**

> This, dear traveler, is what they at the penumbra like to refer to as, an intermission. So please, take a moment, to pour yourself a soothing libation. Once you've collected yourself, join us for part four of Peter Nureyev and the Devil of Brahma.


End file.
